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Canada falling short amid global refugee crisis

Once a world leader in accepting refugees, Canada is now a shadow of its former self.

Syrian refugees walk at a camp in Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border. Worldwide, almost 60 million people are now displaced, more than at any time since the Second World War. (Emrah Gurel / AP)

By Megan Bradley

Sat., June 20, 2015

Wasim has been on my mind lately. We met two years ago in Zaatari, the sprawling Syrian refugee camp that has become Jordan’s fourth largest city. At the time, Wasim was a recent arrival, having just carried his six-day-old baby on foot across the desolate frontier between Syria and Jordan in the dead of night.

Wasim had tried to weather the war in Syria, but then his house was destroyed. It was the final straw. He packed his bags.

I find myself wondering where Wasim is today. When we met, he had just found a few hours of work each week as a janitor for an aid agency in the camp. Before leaving Syria, he was an accountant, and supervised a team of 50 colleagues. Is he still in Zaatari, or has he joined the majority of refugees — in Jordan and around the world — who live not in camps but in towns and cities alongside their hosts? Were the rest of his family able to escape Syria before its neighbouring states effectively closed their doors? Does he tell his daughter stories of her six-day homeland?

In the two years since we met, millions of people have had to flee their homes due to war and human rights violations. Worldwide, almost 60 million people are now displaced, more than at any time since the Second World War. Over 19.5 million found refuge across an international border, while 38.2 million — almost twice as many — were uprooted within their home countries.

Yesterday was World Refugee Day, a chance to celebrate the sheer grit that brings refugees across borders in the darkness, and the determination that sustains those trapped in war zones in an unending search for safety. Such occasions are an opportunity to applaud the generosity of governments and communities in the developing world that host 86 per cent of the world’s refugees, despite their own problems of poverty and strapped social service systems.

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It’s also a chance to look in the mirror and think about what Canada’s role. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that on a global scale the answer is: not much. In 1986, Canada received the Nansen Award from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, which honours extraordinary service to forced migrants. Canada is the only country to have ever received the award. The citation applauds Canada’s “essential and constant contribution to the cause of refugees … Canada is a leading contributor to international humanitarian and refugee aid programmes. Canada has, from the beginning, supported international efforts on behalf of refugees. It has one of the best records for resettlement of refugees and is a leading UNHCR donor.”

When it comes to leadership in service of refugees, we are now a shadow of our former selves. We do not rank among the top 10 donors to UNHCR, outstripped by much smaller countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands and Kuwait. Canada took in 13,365 asylum seekers last year. In contrast, Turkey received more than 81,000 asylum applications in the first nine months of 2014 — from Iraqis alone. That country also hosts over 1.7 million Syrian refugees.

Resettlement brings refugees from host countries in the developing world to Canada so that they can build new lives here. Canada aims to resettle approximately 10,000 refugees each year — less than 0.02 per cent of the number of Syrian refugees hosted by Jordan, and not even 0.009 per cent of the total sheltered in Lebanon.

The government has promised to scale up to resettle an additional 10,000 refugees from the Syrian crisis over the next three years, but past pledges to jump-start our slow-motion system have not been honoured. Even if we met this target, it would be an infinitesimal proportion of the total number of Syrian refugees, not to mention those displaced from countries that don’t make the headlines, but where displacement exacts a massive toll, such as Central African Republic, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I started my career as a resettlement caseworker with UNHCR in Egypt, helping refugees from Somalia make their way to the U.S., and am only too aware of the limits of resettlement. It is costly, time consuming and even with an exponential increase in current quotas, it will remain inaccessible to the majority of the world’s refugees who will stay in developing countries in dire need of enhanced support.

But as a country, resettlement is the very best we have to offer, a lifeline for refugees like Wasim who often want nothing more than to go home, but for whom this is simply impossible. As a country that finds itself so abundantly blessed, we should be opening our doors wide and dramatically increasing our financial contributions to address this unprecedented crisis. It’s in our best traditions, and the least we can do.

Megan Bradley is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Development Studies at McGill University.

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